Cymatic Bruce's (aka /u/DJChocoKay) videos were the thing that convinced me to dive into VR development by ordering the DK1. He is one of the most gracious and generous evangelists focused on growing & improving the VR ecosystem, and I just wanted to give a shout out and thanks here!

Same here. I had my devkit and began trying out demos just as Bruce was making his video impressions. The enthusiasm around all these new experiences are what convinced me to fully dive into development.

Oh, I got an idea while listening to this and stuffing my face with pizza. Bruce talked about the benefit for a developer to see someone play their experience for the first time... which got me thinking.

A site where developers can submit their builds, ask for playthroughs.

A pool of VR enthusiasts gets notified and records themselves play the demo for x number of minutes.

Video is uploaded, developer can watch video.

That's the simple version. It can be built upon further to make it into a proper beta test site with MNDAs, private file hosting, private video hosting, profiled testers with age/gender/hardware/etc.

I for one am already going through tons of demos, and it would not be very much work just recording with OBS and pumping it up on YouTube as unlisted videos, providing the link to developer... No need for it to be unlisted if the demo is public though. Hmm hmm hmmmmh...

Yeah, I agree that having a strong ecosystem of VR experience reviewers is critical. Not only for getting feedback to the developer, but also for helping to promote and letting others know about what's worth checking out. That's one reason why that what Cymatic Bruce is doing with his playthrough demos and his livestream is so important.

Of course, there's PewDiePie, who seems to be in some sort of celebrity league of his own. Seeing his Rift reviews is my first exposure to him, but it looks like he's been around and built an unfathomable following before the Rift came out. My take is that he's more concerned about providing an entertaining or sensational playthrough experience rather than providing honest feedback to developers. I'm just glad that there's folks like D of eVRydayVR & Cymatic Bruce and others I mentioned who seem to be more concerned about evangelizing VR and growing the community by exposing others to what's possible in VR.

I will say that one downside to this idea is that experienced VR gamers tend to build up their motion sickness tolerances and VR sea legs so that it's still really important to have new folks to VR try your stuff out to make sure that it still works for them. Getting a broad and diverse set of folks to do user testing is critical.

But I'd say that if you feel called to start doing that, then I think that there's a niche to be carved out there and something that's still very badly needed. It's a sad feeling to post a build to the Oculus Development Forums, and receive mostly crickets as a response.

It's a sad feeling to post a build to the Oculus Development Forums, and receive mostly crickets as a response.

I've noticed this. I don't really understand it except that the Oculus dev forums are extremely busy so many threads get missed. Even so, there's usually 1 reply for every 100 thread views if they're lucky.

I also remember someone on here complaining that they don't see many demos posted to reddit. I personally would be happy to post some more demos to reddit on behalf of the dev to encourage more feedback, but I don't want to step on the dev's toes in case they had other plans in mind. Last time I did that, the dev was somewhat annoyed.

I think BOLL is onto something here, and would be happy to support it in some way.

There's not really any type of incentive for reviewers on the Oculus dev forums. On Reddit & YouTube there's at least a sense of getting link/comment karma or YouTube views/subscribers. There's not a social capital currency that's transferrable beyond the forums. I think any viable solution to attacking this problem would need to build that into the system somehow. What is the reward for taking the time to download, play, and write up the feedback or talk about your review on a video? I think that YouTube has a lot of that built in already, and if there was a site that aggregated those reviews and provided an additional layer of feedback and commenting (like Reddit does), then that'd be awesome.

Also, your Rift Demo Round-ups are a great additional to the ecosystem to give people a digested list of what's new over the past couple of weeks. And so it'd be great to be able to add more voting and feedback into a system to help sift the signal from the noise, or help to float those emerging demos up to the top for more folks to check out. Definitely a lot of room in the community to make that happen.

My other take is that sense that DK1 & DK2 were branded specifically as a "Developer Kit," which could very well prevent some VR enthusiasts from getting a Rift to fill the role of providing reviews and feedback. And perhaps most of the devs are so busy spending their free time actually developing their experiences. But there is definitely no shortage of need when it comes to providing that direct feedback and helping surface VR demos & experiences that are worth checking out.

While YouTube stars like PewDiePie aren't as valuable for developer feedback, they are still incredibly valuable for getting word out to their immense audiences about the Rift and its applications. Without him a lot of people just wouldn't know the Rift exists or have the slightest idea how it works - and his target demographic is going to be the next upcoming generation of VR content creators. A lot of people here find him annoying, and I can see why, but he plays a character that a lot of people enjoy which has given him a lot of reach and influence.

That's a really great point. Yeah, in terms of exposure for the Rift I imagine that it's been pretty huge. PewDiePie definitely has a knack for being entertaining and he's got a great sense of timing and editing. But yet there's a certain amount of sensationalism that I find off-putting over the long-term.

Looking forward to listening to this. I try to catch as much of Bruce's stream on Sunday afternoon as I can..cool demos and an intelligent and engaging host. And yes, I agree with others that Bruce should be on the list of folks to get his DK2 early..